CC development as a coach/performance management
- Thread starter Hkjb
- Start date
We lost our last six conference games in 2017-2018, 5 of which were close games. McIntosh got hurt and missed a couple of those games and played hurt the rest of the season. I think Law missed the last couple of games. I’m glad Falzon and Skelly were healthy but McIntosh was a little more important. How would we have done this year if Buie missed games? I think good lead guard play is the important factor in winning under Collins. And like I said, in 2018-2019, we literally had no point guard. He tried Gaines and Turner because there was nobody else. Not saying Collins did a good job that year. Just giving you other reasons.
Who is responsible for building a roster that includes sufficient qualified ball handlers?
I know, admissions… funny they don’t get the credit the dance years, only the blame for all the rest of the bad years.
That last line makes zero sense - there is no “credit”. Our standards are higher - it’s a one -way outcome - we limit ourselves.
It’s unfathomable how you are still trying to distort how this admissions issue works.
Realistically, that team had 3 starters who were below average for the Power 6 - Gaines, Turner and Taylor.
Kopp, Greer and Nance were all getting time as freshmen.
Benson and Falzon.
Thats not enough to win.
And who's ultimately responsible for that?
That's all part of being the HC, correct?
A frosh Sobo level PG would have sufficed.
Like I've stated before, CC had a period where he was over-infatuated w/ stretch-4s (who, pretty much, never panned out) where he did a poor job w/ roster construction. esp at a time when guard play is more important than ever.
The good news is that he seems to have learned from his mistakes (don't think he'll be repeating them as often as Fitz has done).
Last edited:
Sure Bob, if you say so! Even a miraculous season has you still throwing shade.
when you use words like "miraculous" instead of "surprisingly good" it only fans the flames.
For me, it was a pleasant surprise. I know we had significantly different expectations, but there is no way I can consider it a "miracle." Our defense improved and Nicholson, Barnhizer, Buie (and even Verhoeven) were just better than people thought. Beran, Hunger and Roper did not live up to expectations, yet we still went 12-8 in the league.
Yes, my expectations were in line with most of the published media predictions during the preseason. I can’t find any from credible publications that had NU above 13th. So taking second is in my book miraculous. Not sure where I am fanning the flames. I was clearly wrong as were most. Yes, I do believe that everyone involved ( players, all coaches, staff and even the fans) should take a bow. This includes the HC. Yet we have some on here that can’t have nice things and continue to find reasons to limit the credit that goes to CCC or Chase as an example. I am not pointing to you on this comment, but an overall sentiment that occasionally surfaces. We have a COY and a DPOY and my belief is they should be celebrated for what they debating on whether they deserved it reminds me of the dude who apologized to Wisconsin fans because NU beat them.
Thats entirely fair.
It is funny though - I agree with you that the "prognosticators" nearly all said we would be in the bottom 3 - I just don't think those folks are very good at predicting - so I ignore them. It was pretty obvious that Northwestern had a decent, energized team as soon as the season started in early November.
To me Collins got called out publicly by the AD (which I wasn't happy about) but re-grouped, looked inward, re-evaluated his approach and (in effect) got his sh#t together. I hope he continues on the same path, because I believe NU can have a consistent winning basketball program.
I can give that credit only as long as he gets the credit for the bad seasons. You create a straw man argument stating it’s only about not giving credit. You choose to either ignore the fact that certain folks only credit CCC for the good and blame any bad on other things, or you participate in that exercise.
While I believe the largest factor in the success last year is due to Lowry, I can acknowledge CCC has a large role to play and deserve credit, as he deserves the credit for all the bad years.
I agree with you most of the time but not here. I did not see a team that would achieve success in conference based on non conference play. I was amazed and stunned by their performance and can agree w ppd of the miraculous nature.
CCC has had his share of missteps since he took the helm. He deserves to be questioned when things go astray. My position always was that CCC is not a bad HC. In fact, I believe he is better than the average Coach in the B1G. That’s an opinion, doesn’t mean I am right. However, I believe win or lose, there are indisputable obstacles CCc faces that are not typical in the B1G. First and foremost is Admissions, not far behind is a horrible history. Add in what has been up until this year poor fan/student support and it’s a tough uphill battle to be consistently good.
Let’s also recall that all of the furor last year on this board was debating whether / when he should be fired. That’s a long way from where we are now. Go Cats!
I already said it was his fault. I was responding to your initial post about the assistant coaches being the reason we had disappointing seasons.
I'm not a big fan of 'nuff said arguments, but if we're going to make the argument that the season's results mean that the people in charge did their jobs, then we need to credit the AD calling out CCC as terrific AD-ing.
As much as I don't want to give AD Gragg credit - because I didn't like the public nature of the calling out - it is possible that it had a desired effect on Collins, so you'd have to give Gragg some credit.
But I think it may have been accidental.
It did occur to me that Coach Collins had never really been specifically blamed for the program's struggles and that he realized he needed to up his game - that maybe it really was partly his fault, not just the players. If that sort of self-evaluation actually happened it is encouraging and a credit to Coach Collins.
Ok, and don’t forget admissions as they let in players that would not be accepted via the normal student pool.
There's an entire season, it shouldn't have come down to the last 6 games (mind you, to make the NIT, not the NCAAs).
Still should have been able to win at least 1 of those last 6 gms (during the Tourney season, the Cats got one of their biggest wins @Wisky when Pardon was out), more w/ a competent backup PG (not even talking a frosh Sobo level PG).
But worse was that the Cats didn't do better w/ what was a pretty weak OOC schedule.
Only good (not elite) teams they faced were Creighton (10-8 in the BE) and TTech (11-7 in the B12) and lost both games (getting smashed by Tech); also lost to a ranked OU team, but there's no shame in that.
But the low point was losing to a bad GTech (6-12 in the ACC) in the Challenge.
During the 1st part of the conference schedule, the Cats lost to PSU and IU (both finished .500 in the conference).
So, back when everyone was healthy, the team underperformed.
And during the 6 gm losing streak down the stretch, they lost to a bad RU team (which was playing w/o their Senior captain, Freeman) and a bad Iowa team.
Collins, himself, admitted that the 2017-2018 season wasn't his best coaching job, but just as evident was his failure to add depth (much less key pieces).
For the 2015-17 recruiting classes, only impact player added was Pardon, and none of the PGs ended up being serviceable.
The 2018 class had Nance and Kopp, but neither was an impact player as a frosh, and neither was a player that one could build a team around.
Last edited:
While it wasn't the only reason, it still played a part.
If CC hadn't made the significant changes to his staff, don't think the Cats would have had the season they had.
Similar threads
